The World Wide Web is a vast repository of information that connects people and provides access to millions of web resources via the Internet. Social Networks are growing exponentially, which presents challenges for enterprises who want to monitor and mine the data provided by these social networks. Typically a social network is a structure where people/organizations connect with each other and form a special type of relationship, for example, a blog search module which connects the blogs and social media sites with the advertisers who want to join the conversation and hence forming a social network. Additionally, social networks, both formal as well as informal can foster knowledge sharing among the participants. A participant herein refers to a person/organization who is participating in contributing content either directly or indirectly in any social network.
The exchanges that take place in social networking environments go beyond providing direct value to the participants. It fosters collaboration among them and can lead to aggregation of highly influential content and ideas within various types of social networks. There is market opportunity for organizations who can mine intelligence out of social network databases. As is known in the art, a social network database generally refers to a repository of content generated in social networking environment by the participants of such social network. Content generated in social networking environments would include discussion threads, logs of chat room conversations, contents of blogs, and any other content posted by the participants. This collection of content comes generally from original sources (creation of the participants), referenced sources (material cited and presented by the participants) and aggregated content (collection of material assembled in a unique manner). The accumulated content can be considered as an asset that has value, which can be tapped through the right types of analyses. This asset has potential value to both the participants and non-participants whose products and services being discussed in any social network.
Some of the participants have great influence on other participants and even non participants when they write/blog/cite any content in a specific domain. For example, if a world-renowned chef writes a review about a restaurant on a social network, the published content has a potential to make an impact about the restaurant on the participants/non-participants as the content has be written by a person who is influential in the field of cookery. Therefore, it may be vital for all the restaurants to keep an eye on such key influencers.
Many organizations perform Social Network Analysis (SNA) on the social media to extract information useful for their organization. Though, there is a general need to enable a person/organization to real-time monitor and analyze social network databases and determine actual key influencers. Thereby, enhance their decision making ability. Several aspects of the present disclosure provides a social network intelligence platform which monitors and analyze the social network database to enable a user(s)/organization(s) to enhance their decision making ability as described in below sections.